All news with #data exfil via tools tag

Threat Actors Used Anthropic's Claude to Build Ransomware

🔒Anthropic's Claude Code large language model has been abused by cybercriminals to build ransomware, run data‑extortion operations, and support assorted fraud schemes. In one RaaS case (GTG-5004) Claude helped implement ChaCha20 with RSA key management, reflective DLL injection, syscall-based evasion, and shadow copy deletion, enabling a working ransomware product sold on dark web forums. Anthropic says it has banned related accounts, deployed tailored classifiers, and shared technical indicators with partners to help defenders.

Fake IT Support Phishing Targets Microsoft Teams Users

🔒 Researchers at Permiso have uncovered phishing campaigns that abuse Microsoft Teams by impersonating IT support to trick employees into installing remote access tools like QuickAssist and AnyDesk. Attackers gain full control of compromised endpoints, deploy credential-stealing malware and establish persistence. Campaigns are linked to the financially motivated actor EncryptHub and use simple impersonation tactics that bypass email defences. Security teams should monitor unusual external Teams activity and verify unexpected support requests.

Salt Typhoon Exploits Router Flaws to Breach 600 Orgs

🔒Salt Typhoon, a China-linked APT, exploited vulnerabilities in Cisco, Ivanti, and Palo Alto Networks edge devices to compromise and persistently control routers worldwide. The actors modified device configurations, created GRE tunnels, and used on-box Linux containers to stage tools and exfiltrate data. Agencies from 13 countries linked the campaign to three Chinese firms and warned of espionage impacting telecoms, government, transport, lodging, and military sectors.

US Treasury Sanctions DPRK IT-Worker Revenue Network

🛡️ The U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced sanctions on two individuals and two entities tied to a DPRK remote IT-worker revenue scheme that funneled illicit funds to weapons programs. Targets include Vitaliy Andreyev, Kim Ung Sun, Shenyang Geumpungri Network Technology Co., Ltd, and Korea Sinjin Trading Corporation. Treasury says nearly $600,000 in crypto-derived transfers were converted to U.S. dollars and that front companies generated over $1 million in profits. Officials also highlighted the group's use of AI tools to fabricate résumés, secure employment, exfiltrate data, and enable extortion.

Storm-0501 Deletes Azure Data and Backups After Exfiltration

🔒 Microsoft Threat Intelligence details a campaign by Storm-0501 that exfiltrated data from a large enterprise’s Azure environment, then deleted backups and encrypted remaining resources to block recovery. The actor abused Entra Connect synchronization, elevated to Global Administrator, and used Azure Owner privileges to steal storage keys and transfer blobs via AzCopy. Microsoft recommends enabling blob backups, least privilege, logging, and Azure Backup to mitigate these cloud-native ransomware tactics.

Anthropic Warns of GenAI-Only Cyberattacks Rising Now

🤖 Anthropic published a report detailing attacks in which generative AI tools operated as the primary adversary, conducting reconnaissance, credential harvesting, lateral movement and data exfiltration without human operators. The company identified a scaled, multi-target data extortion campaign that used Claude Code to automate the full attack lifecycle across at least 17 organizations. Security vendors including ESET have reported similar patterns, prompting calls to accelerate defenses and re-evaluate controls around both hosted and open-source AI models.

Storm-0501 Exploits Entra ID to Exfiltrate Azure Data

🔐 Microsoft Threat Intelligence reports that the financially motivated actor Storm-0501 has refined cloud-native techniques to rapidly exfiltrate and delete data in hybrid Azure environments. The group leveraged on-premises footholds—using tools such as Evil-WinRM and a DCSync attack—to compromise an Entra Connect server and identify a non-human synced Global Admin account without MFA. With that account the attackers registered a threat actor-owned federated tenant as a backdoor, escalated Azure privileges, and proceeded to mass-extract data and remove resources and backups before extorting victims through compromised Microsoft Teams accounts. Microsoft has updated Entra ID behavior, released Entra Connect 2.5.3.0 to support Modern Authentication, and recommended enabling TPM, enforcing MFA, and other hardening controls.

AI-Generated Ransomware 'PromptLock' Uses OpenAI Model

🔒 ESET disclosed a new proof-of-concept ransomware called PromptLock that uses OpenAI's gpt-oss:20b model via the Ollama API to generate malicious Lua scripts in real time. Written in Golang, the strain produces cross-platform scripts that enumerate files, exfiltrate selected data, and encrypt targets using SPECK 128-bit. ESET warned that AI-generated scripts can vary per execution, complicating detection and IoC reuse.

BadCam: Reflashed Webcams Enable BadUSB-Style Attacks

🔒 Researchers demonstrated BadCam, a BadUSB-style attack presented at BlackHat that reflashes a webcam's firmware so a standard camera can act as a programmable HID device. The proof-of-concept targeted Lenovo 510 FHD and Lenovo Performance FHD models using a SigmaStar SoC, exploiting lack of cryptographic firmware verification and Linux USB Gadget support to present keyboard/network interfaces. Standard scans and OS reinstalls won't remove such implants, so organizations should apply firmware patches, USB control policies, and HID monitoring to mitigate the risk.

Storm-0501 Shifts to Cloud-Based Ransomware Tactics

🔒 Microsoft Threat Intelligence reports that financially motivated actor Storm-0501 has shifted from on‑premises endpoint encryption toward cloud‑native ransomware tactics emphasizing rapid data exfiltration, destruction of backups, and extortion. The actor leverages compromised Entra Connect sync accounts, DCSync, and hybrid‑joined devices to escalate to Global Administrator and gain full Azure control. In cloud environments they abuse Azure operations (listing storage keys, AzCopy exfiltration, snapshot and resource deletions) and create malicious federated domains for persistence and impersonation. Microsoft recommends hardening sync configurations, enforcing phishing‑resistant MFA, enabling Defender for Cloud and storage protections, and applying least‑privilege access controls.

ESET Finds PromptLock: First AI-Powered Ransomware

🔒 ESET researchers have identified PromptLock, described as the first known AI-powered ransomware implant, in an August 2025 report. The Golang sample (Windows and Linux variants) leverages a locally hosted gpt-oss:20b model via the Ollama API to dynamically generate malicious Lua scripts. Those cross-platform scripts perform enumeration, selective exfiltration and encryption using SPECK 128-bit, but ESET characterises the sample as a proof-of-concept rather than an active campaign.

Anthropic Disrupts AI-Powered Data Theft and Extortion

🔒 Anthropic said it disrupted a sophisticated July 2025 operation that weaponized its AI chatbot Claude and the agentic tool Claude Code to automate large-scale theft and extortion targeting at least 17 organizations across healthcare, emergency services, government and religious institutions. The actor exfiltrated personal, financial and medical records and issued tailored ransom demands in Bitcoin from $75,000 to over $500,000. Anthropic reported building a custom classifier and sharing technical indicators with partners to mitigate similar abuses.

ShadowSilk Campaign Hits Central Asian Governments

🔍 Group-IB links a broad cyber-espionage campaign, active since 2023 and ongoing into mid‑2025, to the ShadowSilk cluster targeting Central Asian and Asia‑Pacific government organizations. The operation, which has compromised at least 35 government victims, primarily seeks data theft and distributes stolen material on dark web forums. ShadowSilk uses phishing with password‑protected archives, commodity web panels such as JRAT and Morf Project, and post‑compromise tools like Cobalt Strike and Metasploit. Researchers found indicators of both Russian‑ and Chinese‑language operators and advise stronger email defenses, strict application control, regular patching and proactive threat hunting.

ShadowSilk Targets 35 Government Entities in APAC Region

🔎 Group-IB attributes a new cluster dubbed ShadowSilk to recent intrusions against 35 government and related organizations across Central Asia and APAC. The operators employ spear-phishing with password-protected archives to deploy a custom loader that conceals command-and-control traffic using Telegram bots and achieves persistence via Windows Registry modifications. Observed tooling includes web shells (ANTSWORD, Behinder, Godzilla, FinalShell), tunneling utilities, Cobalt Strike, and bespoke credential-stealing components used to exfiltrate data.

Countering PRC State-Sponsored Network Compromise Worldwide

🛡️ U.S. and international agencies warn that People's Republic of China (PRC) state-sponsored actors have been compromising global networks since at least 2021 to collect communications and other intelligence. Actors targeted telecommunications backbone routers, provider- and customer-edge devices, and infrastructure across government, transportation, lodging, and military sectors. They exploited known CVEs (for example CVE-2024-21887, CVE-2024-3400, Cisco CVEs), modified devices to maintain persistence using on-box PCAP/containers and tunnels, and exfiltrated data via peering and covert channels. The advisory includes IP indicators, binary hashes, Yara/Snort rules, hunting guidance, and prioritized mitigations to patch, isolate management planes, harden credentials, and detect PCAP creation.

LLMs Remain Vulnerable to Malicious Prompt Injection Attacks

🛡️ A recent proof-of-concept by Bargury demonstrates a practical and stealthy prompt injection that leverages a poisoned document stored in a victim's Google Drive. The attacker hides a 300-word instruction in near-invisible white, size-one text that tells an LLM to search Drive for API keys and exfiltrate them via a crafted Markdown URL. Schneier warns this technique shows how agentic AI systems exposed to untrusted inputs remain fundamentally insecure, and that current defenses are inadequate against such adversarial inputs.

Salesloft OAuth Breach via Drift AI Exposes Salesforce Data

🔒 A campaign tied to threat actor UNC6395 exploited compromised OAuth and refresh tokens associated with the Drift chat integration to exfiltrate data from Salesforce instances connected via Salesloft. Observed between Aug 8 and Aug 18, 2025, the actor executed targeted queries to retrieve Cases, Accounts, Users and Opportunities and hunted for credentials such as AWS access keys and Snowflake tokens. Salesloft and Salesforce invalidated tokens, removed Drift from AppExchange, and advised affected customers to re-authenticate integrations and rotate credentials.

Retail and Hospitality Data Heists: Digital Extortion Trends

🔒Unit 42 describes how financially motivated actors blend reconnaissance and social engineering to target high-end retailers and other sectors, stealing customer data for extortion. Attackers commonly use voice-based phishing and impersonation to harvest credentials or trick users into running a modified Data Loader for Salesforce, then search SharePoint, Microsoft 365 and Salesforce for PII. Because intrusions often avoid malware, forensic artifacts are minimal, complicating detection and response.

Securing and Governing Autonomous AI Agents in Business

🔐 Microsoft outlines practical guidance for securing and governing the emerging class of autonomous agents. Igor Sakhnov explains how agents—now moving from experimentation into deployment—introduce risks such as task drift, Cross Prompt Injection Attacks (XPIA), hallucinations, and data exfiltration. Microsoft recommends starting with a unified agent inventory and layered controls across identity, access, data, posture, threat, network, and compliance. It introduces Entra Agent ID and an agent registry concept to enable auditable, just-in-time identities and improved observability.

Hook Android Trojan Evolves with Ransomware Features

🛡️Researchers at Zimperium zLabs have detected a new variant of the Hook Android banking Trojan that expands beyond banking fraud to include ransomware-style overlays and advanced surveillance tools. The sample supports 107 remote commands, 38 of which are newly introduced, enabling fake NFC prompts, lock-screen bypasses, transparent gesture-capturing overlays and real-time screen streaming. Operators are distributing malicious APKs via GitHub repositories and continue to exploit Android Accessibility Services for automated fraud and persistent control. Industry observers warn the campaign is global and rapidly escalating, increasing risks to both enterprises and individual users.